Portrait of Olivia Dean © Tami Aftab, featured in the exhibition Icons and Image Makers: Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery on show at CHANEL Nexus Hall in Ginza, Tokyo until 29 November
A new role has been announced at London’s National Portrait Gallery – the CHANEL Curator of Photography
London’s National Portrait Gallery and CHANEL Culture Fund have teamed up to create a new post, the CHANEL Curator of Photography. The role is the first medium-specific role CHANEL has supported at the NPG, and builds on a partnership with the gallery dating back to 2020. The first CHANEL Curator of Photography will be announced later this Autumn.
Between 2020-25, CHANEL Culture Fund supported the CHANEL Curator for the Collection at NPG, for example, held by Dr. Flavia Frigeri. Now Chief Curator at the NPG, Frigeri was responsible for the Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture project, which readdressed the gender imbalance in the NPG’s collection through acquisitions, research and site-specific commissions. This initiative included the Madame Yevonde project, which funded the conservation, research, cataloguing, and digitisation of Yevonde’s 2000 tri-colour separation negatives, acquired by NPG in 2021. The exhibition Yevonde: Life and Colour, which ran from 22 June – 15 October 2023 and featured over 150 words by the pioneering image-maker, was also directly supported by CHANEL Culture Fund.
“The National Portrait Gallery’s photographs collection spans more than 250,000 images from the 1840s to today,” comments Frigeri of the new CHANEL Curator of Photography role. “The new Chanel post will raise the collection’s profile by supporting research and the development of a future strategy.”
CHANEL Culture Fund also recently invited NPG to curate an exhibition at CHANEL Nexus Hall in Ginza, Tokyo, on show until 29 November. Icons and Image Makers: Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery includes 59 photographs of British icons drawn from the NPG’s collection, including Jack Davison’s 2016 portrait of Ruth Negga, and Tami Aftab’s 2021 photograph of Olivia Dean, as well as work by Irving Penn, Juergen Teller, and many others. The exhibition is CHANEL’s Cultural Fund’s first exhibition with one of its partner institutions to be held in Japan.
“The National Portrait Gallery’s photographs collection spans more than 250,000 images from the 1840s to today. The new Chanel post will raise the collection’s profile by supporting research and the development of a future strategy.” Dr Flavia Frigeri, chief curator, NPG
CHANEL Cultural Fund is partnered with many art institutions around the world, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. It was also the main sponsor of the French Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The Fund also supports photography-specific initiatives, including the Kyotographie International Photography Festival, and supported British artist Linder’s first exhibitions in Japan at both Kyotographie and at CHANEL Nexus Hall. In early 2026 CHANEL Nexus Hall commissioned US photographer Roe Ethridge to create a series of collages exploring Gabrielle Chanel’s possessions, which was also shown at both CHANEL Nexus Hall and Kyotographie – as was an earlier solo show by Indian image-maker Pushpamala N.
The fund supports the Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival, co-founding the Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image with festival-organiser Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in 2021. Helping nurture the next generation of Chinese curators and researchers through open calls, master classes, project funding, and mentorship, this award invites selected artist/curator duos to submit proposals, then helps develop and support these proposals. Selected proposals are presented at the festival in a group show, with one winning proposal selected for further realisation and touring.
The group show this year is titled Afterglow, and goes on show in the Jimei x Arles festival from 17 November – 03 January. Curated by Rachel Wuang, it brings together work by six artists exploring stereotypes of Northeast China; Gu Tao, Hu Weiyi, Li Yong, Liu Yujia, Tong Yutian, and Yi Changhong. The 2026 residency for the next edition will take place alongside the Jimei x Arles opening week; themed ‘The Generative Eye’, it includes rising curator He Yining as the mentor, alongside senior curators Carol Yinghua Lu and Liu Ding.
CHANEL Cultural Fund also creates an annual publication, Arts & Culture, which launched its second issue in October. The 300-page issue featured work by Linder and NPG director Victoria Siddall, as well as new work by Cindy Sherman. The work featured is from Sherman’s Fabric Matrons series, which includes fabric and jewellery the artist was invited to incorporate from Chanel’s archive; Sherman’s collaboration with Chanel dates back to her Ominous Landscapes series from 2010-2012, in which she also created characters wearing garments and accessories from Chanel’s archive. Works from the Fabric Matrons series are on show at Hauser & Wirth, London until 23 December.
Arts & Culture is distributed free of charge at selected art institutions and bookshops, including Paris’ Librarie 7L, which is owned by Chanel. The magazine does not carry ads, apart from publicity for the partner bookshops, which are given to the stores free of charge. Arts & Culture is produced under the direction of Yana Peel, President of Arts, Culture & Heritage at Chanel.
“At the heart of the work of the CHANEL Culture Fund is cultivating care for ideas, for artists, and for the irreplaceable act of making something new,” says Peel. “Our ARTS & CULTURE magazine is where that practice leaves its trace. There could be no one better to grace the cover of Vol.2 than Cindy Sherman, who for five decades has examined the construction of identity and the power over personae that women hold. In her photographs, she renders the modern woman – and her freedom of becoming – with empowerment and care.”
